Andrés López Cabello and Ana Cecilia Gaitán Introduction While SARS-CoV-2 containment measures transformed all spheres of social interaction, the COVID-19 pandemic has subjected national health systems to unforeseen strain, leading to their virtual collapse in many countries. The international health crisis has exacerbated social inequalities, with a disproportionate impact on traditionally neglected people; unfortunately, its socioeconomic impacts are likely only to deepen in the future.[1] Sexual and reproductive health and…
A Time for Optimism? Securing Individual Choice for Intersex Genital Surgeries in the United States
Hans Lindahl Forced genital surgeries on intersex children remain a commonly overlooked health and human rights struggle. Skirting individual consent, invasive procedures such as clitoral reduction and vaginoplasty can still be offered to parents—if justified by the judgement of a specialist that a child’s anatomy looks “too atypical.” The surgeries, which impact fertility and sexual function, are usually performed when a child is under two years old. This practice of…
COVID-19 and the Law: Framing Healthcare Worker Risks as Women’s Rights Violations
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik Today, public health is ‘delivered by women and led by men’, with a glaring absence of women and nurses at the decision making table.[1] Globally, though women only make up 25% of those in healthcare leadership they make up the majority of healthcare workers (70%) and nurses (90%).[2] This exclusion skews the agendas on health so the gender dimensions of research, diagnosis, treatment, and care are rendered…
PERSPECTIVE EU Migration Pact Fails to Address Human Rights Concerns in Lesvos, Greece
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 291 – 296 PDF Vasileia Digidiki and Jacqueline Bhabha On September 23, 2020, the European Commission released its draft Pact on Asylum and Migration.[1] The timing was not coincidental. Just two weeks earlier, on September 8, 2020, Moria camp, Europe’s first migrant “hotspot” and its largest refugee camp, had burned to the ground. In the five years since its opening, on the small Greek island…
Regulating Conscientious Objection to Legal Abortion in Argentina: Taking into Consideration Its Uses and Consequences
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 271 – 384 PDF Agustina Ramón Michel, Stephanie Kung, Alyse López-Salm, and Sonia Ariza Navarrete Abstract Claims of conscientious objection (CO) have expanded in the health care field, particularly in relation to abortion services. In practice, CO is being used in ways beyond those originally imagined by liberalism, creating a number of barriers to abortion access. In Argentina, current CO regulation is lacking and insufficient.…
Underreporting of Violence to Police among Women Sex Workers in Canada: Amplified Inequities for Im/migrant and In-Call Workers Prior to and Following End-Demand Legislation
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 257 – 270 PDF Bronwyn McBride, Kate Shannon, Brittany Bingham, Melissa Braschel, Steffanie Strathdee, and Shira M. Goldenberg Abstract Sex workers globally face high levels of violence. In Canada, im/migrant sex workers who work in indoor venues may be uniquely targeted by police due to immigration policies, racialized policing, and the conflation of trafficking and sex work. In 2014, Canada passed end-demand legislation that purportedly…
Community Mobilization to Promote and Protect the Sexual and Reproductive Rights of Women Living with HIV in Latin America
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp. 213 – 226 PDF Tamil Kendall, Jimena Avalos Capin, Nazneen Damji, and Eugenia Lopez Uribe Abstract Between 2009 and 2014, the International Community of Women Living with HIV in Latin America and the Mexican feminist civil society organization Balance coordinated a five-country community-led intervention that brought together women living with HIV (WLHIV), trans women, sex workers, and feminist lawyers to document and respond to sexual…
Intimate Partner Violence, Human Rights Violations, and HIV among Women in Nairobi, Kenya
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 155 – 166 PDF Courtney Andrews, Tina Kempin Reuter, Lauren Marsh, Judith M. Velazquez, Walter Jaoko, and Pauline Folly Abstract This study presents qualitative results from a mixed-method investigation conducted between May and August 2012 into the prevalence and consequences of four forms of intimate partner violence among women living with HIV who attended the Comprehensive Care Clinic at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi.…
Autonomous Health Movements: Criminalization, De-Medicalization, and Community-Based Direct Action
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 85 – 98 PDF Naomi Braine Abstract This paper proposes the concept of autonomous health movements, drawing on an analysis of harm reduction in the United States and self-managed abortion globally. Harm reduction and self-managed abortion appear in the professional literature largely as evidenced-based public health strategies, more than as social movements. However, each began at the margins of the law as a form of…
VIEWPOINT An Invitation to a Feminist Approach to Global Health Data
Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp. 75 -78 PDF Shirin Heidari and Heather Doyle The notable gendered socioeconomic, health, and human rights implications of COVID-19 have sparked a renewed conversation on gender data gaps and the risks of gender-blind responses that ignore structural determinants of health and undermine social justice goals.1 Higher mortality among men, disproportionate social, economic, and health effects on ethnic and racial minorities, high infection rates among the…
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